


Breaking Through

by flipflop_diva



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Awesome Sharon Carter, Brainwashing, Established Relationship, F/F, Hurt/Comfort, Kidnapping, Natasha Needs a Hug, POV Sharon Carter, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Revenge, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-29
Updated: 2016-10-29
Packaged: 2018-08-27 03:16:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,018
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8385118
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flipflop_diva/pseuds/flipflop_diva
Summary: It had been thirty-six days since Rumlow kidnapped Natasha. Sharon had been prepared for all kinds of horrible scenarios — She had been prepared to find her chained to a wall, starving and half-dead. She been prepared to find her a mass of bruises and burns and broken bones — but the one thing she hadn't prepared herself for was this. But she wasn't giving up. She loved her too much to do that.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Lunarium](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lunarium/gifts).



> To Scribe_of_Mirrormere, thank you for all of your great prompts! I had a hard time deciding what to write. This one didn't go exactly the way you asked for it, but it was definitely inspired by it, and I hope you enjoy!

“Sharon, we have a lead. A good one. We think we know where she is.”

The words were like a sudden bright light in a sea of darkness. Sharon was on her feet in an instant, already grabbing guns and her holster, torn between running to the door full-speed and down the hall to the Quinjet or throwing herself into Steve’s arms in gratitude and possible relief. It wasn’t that she had thought the rest of the Avengers _wouldn’t_ look for her, or that they would ever just give up as long as she was still missing, but the amount of effort they had been investing and the concern that shown on each of their faces every day and in everything they did was more comforting than she would ever be able to describe.

Steve made the decision about which way to go for her. He reached out, put a hand on her arm and then pulled her into an embrace.

“Just be prepared,” he said quietly. “He’s had her for a month.”

The bright light that had suddenly burst into her world diminished just a little at that. He was right. Sharon knew that. Brock Rumlow had been wanting revenge ever since he almost died the day that SHIELD fell. They had all thought Steve had been his primary target, but when Rumlow and his men had lured the Avengers into a trap, by planting hostages in an abandoned Hydra facility and them ambushing the team when they showed up for the rescue mission, it was Natasha they had grabbed.

They still weren’t sure how. They had all tried repeatedly to explain it to Sharon, but there was nothing they could say to change what happened — Steve and Natasha had been freeing the hostages, Sam and Rhodey were on patrol on the outside, Wanda and Vision were on alert inside. Steve said it was like a bomb had gone off, but they weren’t sure if that was really it — the room had filled with smoke, no one could see, no one could breath.

Wanda said she heard the pounding of footsteps, like an army of men. Guns were going off, people were fighting. Everything was loud and dark and chaotic.

And when it cleared, Steve and Wanda and Vision had the hostages. Sam and Rhodey had left a trail of unconscious guards around the building. And the only thing sign left of Natasha was one of her widow’s bites and the comm from her ear lying on the floor surrounded by a pool of blood.

Sharon had come home to her D.C. apartment that afternoon, just an hour after everything had gone down and long before Steve had gotten up the courage to call her, to find Natasha’s other widow’s bite sitting in the middle of the kitchen counter along with a note written in barely legible print.

_You will never see her again._

She took a leave from the CIA and moved into the Avengers facility in upstate New York the next day, along with Tony, and they’d all been searching ever since, going on the belief that Rumlow wanted to use Natasha for his benefit, not kill her, but all it had been was dead end after dead end after dead end. Until now.

“Tony’s been tracking the heat signatures in the building,” Steve told her as they headed down the hall. Sharon could see Sam and Wanda up ahead of them, also hurrying toward the Quinjet. “He has Rumlow on surveillance. We know he visits there frequently.”

“And the heat signatures?”

“We’ve accounted for all of them. Except one.”

“Natasha.”

“Tony thinks so. He says that one never leaves the room its in.”

Sharon closed her eyes, her feet coming to a halt, her lungs seizing up. It had been thirty-six days. That was more than a month, more than five weeks. That was a lot of time — entirely too much time to torture someone, to hurt someone. She’d replayed every scenario in her head — Natasha being tortured, Natasha being chained, Natasha being beaten. Starved. Raped. — every day since she had been taken, but now, now being so close to maybe getting her back, everything suddenly seemed worse.

This was Natasha. This was the woman she loved more than anyone else in the worse. What if she was too hurt, too broken, too damaged?

She couldn’t breath. It was as if all the air in the room had disappeared. All she could see was Natasha’s face, the night before she was kidnapped, grinning up at her as Sharon gripped her wrists in one hand and slid her fingers between her legs with the other.

“I love you,” Sharon had said to her that night, leaning down to kiss her. Natasha hadn’t said it back — she never did. Two years together and expressing something like love was still hard for her, still a betrayal of everything she had ever been taught in childhood, but Sharon hadn’t needed her to say it back. Not that night, not ever. The way Natasha looked at her was enough, and Natasha had looked at her that night with love shining in her eyes.

They had fallen asleep together, Natasha’s hair tickling Sharon’s cheek and her breath warm on her neck. That was the last memory Sharon had of her — Nat had slipped out to head back to the base to head out on the mission to rescue the hostages long before Sharon had woken up.

Now, Nat’s face disappeared from her vision, replaced with Steve’s worried one. Sharon realized he was grabbing her arms, commanding her to look at him, to breathe.

She did as she was told, felt the oxygen pour back into her lungs.

“Maybe you should stay here,” Steve said, but she could tell he didn’t really mean that.

“Never,” Sharon said anyway, just for emphasis. “Let’s go.”

•••

It wasn’t anything she had prepared herself for. She had been prepared to find her chained to a wall, starving and half-dead. She been prepared to find her a mass of bruises and burns and broken bones. She had been prepared for the fact that Rumlow and his men would probably rape her.

She hadn’t been prepared that they would have brainwashed her, that they would have trained her to kill _them_.

It seemed so logical, standing there, watching what was happening. Hydra always brainwashed their members. Why wouldn’t they try it with Natasha, especially when she was more susceptible to it than others because of what the Red Room had done to her? She should have seen this coming. She should have prepared.

But none of them had, and everyone seemed out of sorts, as Natasha broke loose from Sam’s grip and raced toward Steve, a knife clenched in her hand. Steve dodged her attack, but not far enough. Natasha leaped onto his back, the knife in her hand plunging downward.

Steve grunted in pain as the knife dug deep into his skin. Natasha yanked it back out, ready to go again, but Sam had made it over to the two of them, shoved at her hard to knock her loose. They both went down, Steve and Natasha, the knife clattering free from Natasha’s grip. 

Sam went to grab it, but Natasha was closer, and faster. It was back in her fingers almost instantly and this time she was aiming for Sam’s heart.

Sharon, from her position across the room, where she stood frozen in something like shock, didn’t even have time to warn him. But it didn’t matter. A burst of light tore across Sharon’s line of sight. Natasha went flying backward, hitting the wall, hard. She crumpled to the ground.

Sharon stared and then was no longer frozen in place. She was yelling.

“What are you doing?” she screamed. Her words were directed at Tony, but she was running toward Natasha, who wasn’t moving.

“She was going to kill him!” Tony cried.

“She’s human!” Sharon shouted. She dove the distance between her and Natasha, landing by her side, fingers searching for a pulse. “She’s still Natasha! You can’t hit her like …”

She choked, words suddenly stuck in her throat. She couldn’t breathe. Not like before. No, she really couldn’t breathe. Something was squeezing her neck. Fingers.

Natasha.

She heard shouts behind her, Steve or Sam or Tony, she wasn’t sure. Fear overwhelmed her. They were going to go after Natasha to get her to stop. But if Tony blasted her again, if Steve hit her ….

They were stronger than Natasha. But Natasha didn’t know what she was doing. Sharon couldn’t let them hurt her.

The fingers that were wrapped around her throat pressed tighter. Spots formed in front of Sharon’s eyes. She couldn’t breathe at all. She reached up, her own fingers finding what they were searching for, skimming over Natasha’s cheeks, over her lips.

The fingers around her throat loosened, for a fraction of a second. Just enough.

“Nat,” Sharon croaked. “Nat, it’s me! It’s Sharon! Don’t do this! It’s me!”

She couldn’t do more than that. The spots in front of her eyes had all merged together. Her throat burned. There was a buzzing in her ears. She could sense people moving, but she couldn’t decipher what was happening anymore.

And then she heard it, the last thing she heard as the world went black. A very faint whisper.

“Sharon?”

•••

They were curled together in a hospital bed in a small, sterile room in the back of the Avengers facility, far away from the other residents and agents.

Inside, the room was dark, but on the other side of the mirror, Sharon knew at least five or six people were watching them, maybe more. In the morning, Natasha would start the protocol to reverse the brainwashing Hydra had done to her. It was going to be long and it was going to be hard, and the doctors were worried about how she would handle it based on her history.

Natasha was terrified, Sharon could tell. She had barely said a word since Sharon had woken up on the Quinjet, her throat bruised and aching. Instead, she had just thrown herself into Sharon’s arms, tears pooling in her eyes.

Vision had reached for Natasha automatically, to pull her off of Sharon, but Sharon had shaken her head. She knew then, as she knew now, here in this room, that Natasha wouldn’t hurt her. 

She could feel Nat shaking in her arms, and she could feel her tears dripping onto her bare arm, but she just kept stroking her hair and whispering into her ear. “It’s going to be okay, Nat. You’re going to be fine.”

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” It was the only thing she had really said the couple times she had actually spoken, whispering it into Sharon’s chest on the Quinjet and now here in this room.

“You have nothing to be sorry for.”

“I hurt you.”

“It’s not your fault.”

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

“It’s not your fault, Nat. It’s not your fault.”

She knew Natasha didn’t believe her. In Natasha’s eyes, it was one more thing to add to her ledger. But Sharon knew better. What Rumlow and his men had done to Natasha was unforgivable, and she was going to make them pay. She was going to find Rumlow and she was going to make him wish he had never started down this road.

But not right now — right now she was going to stay here, with her girlfriend, and hold her in her arms until she was recovered. Because right now, just like always, Natasha was the most important thing in her life.

Natasha was still whispering apologies into Sharon’s shoulder. Very carefully, Sharon moved her fingers to under Natasha’s chin and lifted her head just slightly, just enough that she could bend down and kiss her. She knew the doctors behind the mirror were watching, but she didn’t care.

“I love you, Natasha,” she whispered against her lips, “and we’re going to get through this.” And she kissed her again to prove her point.


End file.
